Student Jessica Vasquez serves as assistant director on the set of Writers in the Storm.

Student filmmaker wins with rugby story

By: Andres Cuevas Jr.

Posted: 12/3/08

For the second year in a row, Sacramento State's Jessica Vasquez won an award in the short film category at Access Sacramento's "A Place Called Sacramento 2008" film festival.

Vasquez, who has only been screenwriting for two years, said that the entire experience was really exciting, but also nerve-racking at the same time.

"At the festival, they ended up showing our film last so I was there with the rest of the crew waiting anxiously," Vasquez said.

The 10-minute film, "Saturday's a Rugby Day," is about a rugby team at Sac State during the first game of the season.

"I've been playing rugby at Sac State for several years now and I wanted to let people get a better idea for what rugby is, since it's not a very popular sport," Vasquez said.

Besides rugby, the film focuses on the main character dealing with the death of her best friend to breast cancer.

The film ventures into the life of the main character after losing her best friend and also having to replace her on the rugby team.

"The concept of dealing with loss is universal and I felt a lot of people could be touched by that," Vasquez said.

Vasquez dedicated the film to her grandmother who passed away from breast cancer a few years ago, and said it influenced her to make that issue an important one in her script.

She also said that writing about it helped her to deal with the loss of her grandmother.

Vasquez was very happy to be able to include some of her rugby teammates in the film and said that was one of her favorite parts of it.

Alexis Vierra-Potter, senior psychology major and also a rugby team member, was the stunt coordinator for the film and said she had never done anything like this before.

"I'm not particularly interested in filmmaking or anything like that. I'm really just always willing to help Jessica with whatever she needs," Vierra-Potter said.

Vasquez said that the people helping her make the film made all the difference and everything a lot easier to deal with.

"The crew on the film was awesome because there were a lot of talented people involved," Vasquez said.

Kevin Sanderson, senior digital video major, was the cinematographer for the film and said that everyone in the crew learned a lot while making the film.

"I feel like we all learned a lot from this film and are only getting better with more time," Sanderson said.

Jacob Keller, senior film studies major, was the producer for the film and also the producer of Vasquez's first film.

He said there was a huge difference in making the second film compared to the first.

"The first film was a lot more stressful because we had little experience, but the second film we were calmer and knew what to expect," Keller said.

Vasquez said that her second film felt more like an actual movie than the first because there were so many other people involved in it.

"The actors for the film were very confident and just awesome. Kevin added his talent to the table and Jacob and I have both gotten a lot better at what we do," Vasquez said.

Keller also said it was great to be an award-winning producer and it gives him lots of confidence for future films.

"It feels really good to get attention from local filmmakers and sort of have a following because of our movie," Keller said.

Vasquez, Keller and Sanderson are all working on a new comedy called "Writers in the Storm," and hope to be done with that soon.

"I'm not sure if I'll enter this festival again next year. Either way, I still plan to continue making films independently in the future because screenwriting is my passion," Vasquez said.

Andres Cuevas can be reached at acuevas@statehornet.com